ABSTRACT
In few areas of policy-making is the colonial legacy so persistent as in that of urban land policy. The colonial legacy is the existing built environment, infrastructure, transport patterns, and usually legal frameworks. The built environment and the existing arrangements of services such as sewerage, water, electricity, roads, cannot be altered for the most part and continue to exert a powerful influence on urban investment and planning. Action would concentrate on providing land with secure title, and with basic facilities to enable people to become urban dwellers rather than urban transients. The linking of employment with massive urban settlement is a key component of basic human needs. Just as large-scale public housing programmes do not meet the needs of the urban majority, so too large-scale industrial developments of the import substitution type are of questionable benefit, particularly where they are capital rather than labour-intensive.
